Minnesota defenseman Marco Scandella knocks Chicago right wing Marian Hossa onto his butt and off the puck in the second period of game four of the second round Stanley Cup playoff’s at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Friday night, May 9, 2014. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

Sometimes it’s good enough and sometimes it isn’t. But from the time the first puck was dropped at the Xcel Energy Center in October of 2000, the Wild have been checking away. It has been one long defensive journey. It’s in the franchise’s DNA.

Friday night the Wild stifled the Blackhawks to the tune of 4-2. For all Chicago’s talk about wanting to increase the tempo, the Blackhawks found themselves right back in the quicksand for long stretches of Game 4.

“We played tight all the way and it paid off for us,” left winger Charlie Coyle said proudly. “We played confident. We played tight like that and stuck to our structure.”

The Wild simply smothered the Blackhawks for most of the night. Now, the Blackhawks are a high-octane team, and they will come flying down the ice at every opportunity. It’s impossible to completely stymie them. Yet the Wild did as thorough a job as humanly possible. A good forecheck prevented too many mad dashes out of the Chicago zone.

And when a Hawks player did find himself with the puck, he quickly discovered it was like trying to stickhandle in a closet. Wild checkers were all over him. It was exactly what the Wild wanted, of course. They aim to be the sludge in the Blackhawks’ engine, and they’ve been doing a good job of it.

“We kept playing the way we need to play,” said center Mikko Koivu. “We’re pretty happy about that. That’s what we need to do.”

Minnesota has emerged as a Grade A defensive team in these playoffs. For all the Wild’s increased speed and skill, they are at their best when they concentrate on defending. And the Wild needed all their checking powers Friday as goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov always seemed this close to something awful happening. He reminds me of a baseball pitcher who is throwing a shutout but giving up rockets to opposing hitters. This guy scares the heck out of me.

But the Wild did everything they could to limit Chicago’s number of shots, keeping them to just 20 — four in the first, nine in the second, seven in the third. The Blackhawks didn’t help themselves, either, by hesitating to pull the trigger. I have no idea why. Instead, they always appeared to be looking for the perfect pass leading to the perfect shot. With Bryzgalov’s five-hole so wide open that daylight was pouring though, the Wild goaltender benefited greatly from the tight play of his teammates and the Blackhawks’ reticence to shoot.

Meanwhile, the Wild were more than happy to flip the puck in the Chicago zone and try to keep it there.

“I think that’s just a credit to us being ready to play,” said left wing Matt Cooke. “And us being ready to put pucks deep and get in on the forecheck and force them to deal with us rather than just sitting back and allowing them to come at us.”

All coaches preach defense first. And all coaches say defense is the key to success — pretty much in every sport. But the Wild have taken it to another level. They appear to take great pride in disrupting an offense. The Blackhawks often tried to rev their engines but usually went nowhere. It was as if their transmission was in neutral. All they did was create a bunch of noise while barely moving.

This type of defensive play is a Minnesota tradition. Granted, it’s one we hoped we had seen the last of. Everyone wants to watch up-tempo, fire-wagon hockey. Or rock ’em, sock ’em hockey. Or anything but close-checking hockey. But, hey, it’s working.

This team plays as sticky a defensive game as Jacques Lemaire’s old trapping Wild teams. The difference is that the current Wild play defense much faster. It’s more about getting to the puck-carrier and quickly closing up space than it is about neutral zone turnovers. The result is that everyone looks busier than they were in the old trap days. But the effect is the same.

“We’re not here to just try to make a series of it,” coach Mike Yeo said.

Now they will try to carry the momentum to Chicago for the critical Game 5.

“Momentum is tough from game to game,” Cooke said. “I don’t think it really carries over. I think it’s something we have to go out and establish in the first period in Chicago.”

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